Keys to Real Estate Website Success

1. IDX Property Search – the number one reason people visit real estate websites is to search for properties.  If your site doesn't allow them to see all the available properties in your MLS, they'll simply go somewhere else.  (By “available” we mean the properties that are permitted to appear under your MLS's IDX rules.)
2. Professional Appearance – People make quick, visual judgments when they're online.  If your site looks unprofessional, cookie-cutter, or home-made, the message that sends will send them looking elsewhere.
3. Easy to Navigate – Your site can look like it cost you a million dollars and it won't matter one bit to the visitor who can't find what they need – quickly.
4. Search Engine Friendly – To be found is to succeed.  At the very least your site has to be welcoming to Google, Yahoo, Live, Bing, and all the rest.
5. Good Tech Support – Do you really have time to wrestle with a company that won't communicate with you and won't give you quick and friendly technical support?
6. No-maintenance Design – Make sure your website doesn't demand much from you. Most important: your property listings should be updated daily from your MLS.  If you need to add your own listings you could definitely find better ways to spend your time.

 WINNER is not the only website provider that meets these criteria, but it's good to know that every WINNER Website does.

1. Interactive mapping – People are getting used to easy mapping tools on other websites they visit, whether they're looking for a restaurant, a business, or a new home.  If your site doesn't match up to their expectations, they're liable to find some other site to satisfy them.¹
2. Ability to add, modify, or delete pages, text, links, and images on your own – If you want to succeed with Search Engine Marketing you need to be able to expand and improve the content on your website, and you don't want to have to pay a professional web designer to do it for you.¹
3.  Ability to change important Search Engine features, such as Title and Description tags – This feature is also important to any Search Engine Marketing you want to do.¹
4. Featured Listings – Your sellers need to see their properties given a prominent place on your website, so you need a page that's easy to get to that shows your listings without any other distraction.²
5. Good statistics – By keeping track of your website statistics you'll be able tell whether your marketing dollars are working, and what you can do to better spend them.  Make sure you can track visits, see how those visitors found your site, what search engines are visiting your site, and how many pages your visitors are looking at.  Make sure your website provider is able to offer you at least that.³
6. Lead capture tools – Don't just count on visitors picking up the phone.  Make sure your website has features that encourage people to contact you.  The more enticements you can offer to your visitor the better.  However, you can push this too hard as well: if you decide to force people to give you their information before they can view listings, the vast majority of visitors will simply go somewhere else.

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1</sup>Available on our Platinum websites
²Available on our Gold and Platinum websites
³Available on all our websites

 

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